


the devil walks in mist and rain

by anonymousAlchemist



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, a role reversal au, and what it means to be a vigilante, foggy and matt being foggy and matt, i guess i started thinking about "what if we switch who the superhero is" around, which ended up with "foggy is daredevil" and yeah, you could read this as shipping but also as not I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe turns left, but there’s always a Devil in Hell’s Kitchen. </p>
<p>In this universe, that’s Foggy Nelson. </p>
<p>(Or: Stick never showed up. Matt never got vigilante training. Foggy Nelson goes out in the middle of the night and beats criminals up with a baseball bat.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the devil walks in mist and rain

**Author's Note:**

> I started thinking about what if really means to be a vigilante, and I ended up thinking about Foggy Nelson as Daredevil, and how that could come about and what it would mean and what Matt would be like as a normal civvie which apparently is "not that different," and "Foggy is really hard to write as a vigilante."
> 
> note: I wrote this as “the sort of friendship that’s so close that it looks gay as fuck, but you’re welcome to read it as a low key relationship-relationship, I’m fond of both interpretations but I'm indifferent on writing romance.

Foggy Nelson has two loving parents who never expected him to go to law school, much less become a vigilante. He excelled in schools, a straight-A student with an exquisite resume of extracurriculars. He has friends and acquaintances and people like him.

 

Of course, Foggy Nelson is also from Hell’s Kitchen, born and bred.

 

When Foggy is eight, he starts taking taekwondo lessons at the local studio because a couple of the kids from school are doing that and his mom thinks he could stand the discipline. He sticks with it for a large handful of years and becomes friends with the Master. Even after he officially quits, he sometimes comes by after school to shoot the shit and get his ass beat on the mats. The Master is a twenty-something with an accent that Foggy can’t place who stops teaching him taekwondo and starts teaching Foggy everything else. The guy says he’s Korean but when Foggy asks him where he’s from, he just shrugs and says “Pretty far away, kid,” and then kicks his ass on the the mats. He stops in once a week or so until he leaves for college. He gets pretty good.

 

When Foggy is fourteen, a couple of older boys pick a fight with him. He accidentally breaks one of their arms, and then he calls a teacher and gets detention for a week and that’s the last time he fights anyone until he’s out of law school because it makes him sick to the stomach. He joins the baseball team that semester, and he signs the kid’s cast with a “Sorry, hope you feel better, Foggy Nelson.”

 

When Foggy is twenty-two, he meets Matt Murdock and begins the defining relationship of his life. Matt is handsome, charmingly awkward, and ridiculously smart. Matt is a blind orphan whose dad was killed and who was raised by nuns. Foggy sort of wants to wrap him in a blanket and give him a hug some days. Matt gets around pretty well for a blind guy and can even throw a solid punch (“My dad was a boxer,” he explains), but Foggy enjoys being needed, even if Matt is fiercely independent. He’s the best friend Foggy’s ever had.

 

He's twenty five when he notices the woman who frequents the same dive bar he hits up on Fridays, sometimes with Matt. He notices that she sometimes comes in with a man who keeps a tight grip on her wrist. He watches her because she’s pretty at first, and then because he notices her flinch when the guy starts moving his hand toward her face. When she adjusts her sleeve he notices a large, purpling bruise. She doesn’t smile when she’s with him. One night, after a couple of drinks, he slides into the seat next to her.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s just, you don’t seem to like your boyfriend much.”

“He’s alright.”

“Are you sure?”

She looks down at her coffee, and says carefully,

“Thank you, but there’s nothing you can do.”

She then gets up and leaves.

 

Foggy is ashamed to say that he follows her. He’s not ashamed to say that he sees her boyfriend hit her. Multiple times. It’s sort of graphic. That’s when he intervenes. The man

The worst part about it is how good it feels.

 

“You’re not going to touch her again,” he whispers, holding the guy by the front of his shirt. “Because if you do, I’m coming for you.”

He then drops the man on the floor and turns to the woman, who is watching him with wide eyes.

 

“Are you okay?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Awesome. Do you want me to walk you home, or something?”

“No. It’s fine.”

She walks quickly away, scared of both him and her boyfriend.

 

Foggy goes home and sits on the floor with his head in his hands. He thinks about calling Matt. Or his mom. But Matt’s at the library and his mom’s probably asleep and what would he say? How could he explain?

Then he goes to the bathroom to wash the blood off of his hands and to bandage his knuckles.

The next day, Matt frowns at him.

 

“I smell blood. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I just banged up my knuckles last night.”

“Let me see?”

 He holds out his hand. Foggy reluctantly puts his hand in Matt’s palm. Matt traces the lines of the bandage, the roughness of the scabs that are forming. His fingers are warm.

 “You got in a fight.”  

“No I didn’t.”

“Foggy.”

Matt looks in his general direction. His face wears an expression that combines “Who did this to you?” and “I will go beat them up” and “Why are you lying to me?” and “Tell me what’s going on.”

Matt has an expressive face.  

Foggy sighs.

“So I might have gotten into a bit of a scuffle last night, but it’s fine! I won! The asshole totally deserved it!”

“And you’re okay?”

“Peachy. This is the worst of it, I promise.”

 

Matt frowns.

“Okay. but if whoever it was comes after you, I’ll help you take care of it.”

Foggy pulls Matt into a reassuring hug.

“Thanks for the offer, Murdock, but this was a one time thing.”

 

He means it. It was a one time thing, a small thing, beating up a girl’s asshole boyfriend. Nobody means to become a vigilante.

 

But then there’s the guy who sticks a roofie into the freshman girl’s cup. Then the mugger on the corner who grabs the girl’s purse. Then that asshole who lives two streets down from him who sells coke to middle schoolers (what the fuck, dude?).Then the guy who gets the asshole his coke to sell to the middle schoolers. Then there’s the men who transport girls down by the docks, selling them into prostitution.

His high school baseball bat hits a lot of things that aren’t baseballs.

 

Here’s what Foggy learns: once you start looking, there’s crime everywhere. And once you figure out that you can do something about all the tragedy in the world, it becomes impossible to stop. You don’t need to be some sort of superhuman to help. You just have to be willing to get your hands dirty. And Foggy’s mom wanted him to be a butcher.

 

He can’t just fight people as Foggy Nelson though, that’d be stupid, Foggy Nelson is a quasi-respectable lawyer with a career with his best friend ahead of him.

So he buys a mask, and decides that he’ll only intervene while wearing it. He’ll blend in with the rest of the mask-wearing vigilantes that have popped up in the months since the Incident.

 

One night a month, Foggy thinks. That’s enough. He starts going to the gym after work.

One night every two weeks. That’s enough. He buys a better mask and brass knuckles and a heavier baseball bat.

One night every week. That’s enough. He starts making excuses to skip hanging out with friends, with Matt. (He tries to ignore Matt’s hangdog expression.)

 

He comes home with bruises, with cuts and scabs and fractured ribs. He ends things with Marci because it’s too hard to explain. Matt frowns at him at work but Foggy smiles at him and tells him not to worry. Matt does worry.

“I thought I would be the one getting hurt in this relationship.”

“You’re surprisingly graceful for a blind guy, and I’m surprisingly clumsy for a sighted one.”

“Seriously, Foggy.”

“Seriously, Matt. I’m fine. But I’m touched by your concern! Literally! Matt, stop feeling my face.”

“You’ve got a black eye.”

“It’s no big deal, Matt.”

“Foggy, what’s going on?”

“Some guy punched me. It’s okay, I punched him back.”

 

He doesn’t let Matt know about the bandages underneath his suit.

 

And then Nelson and Murdock happens. And Karen Page happens, and because he trusts Matt they take the case. Which leads to Fisk, and everything else that snowballs from there. 

He never meant to tell Matt about the vigilante-ing. Matt has enough going on in his life without needing to worry about him. Matt shouldn’t have to worry about his dumbass best friend fighting people on rooftops. So of course Matt finds him unconscious and bleeding on the couch. He manages to stop Matt from calling 911, at least, but he wakes up on his couch with Matt glaring at him from the squishy armchair that he always sits in.

 

“So when were you going to tell me that you were a vigilante?”

“Matt, I—”

“Is this why you keep getting hurt? Tell me what’s going on.”

 

Foggy explains. He can’t refuse Matt anything. Matt’s face grows darker and darker the longer that Foggy speaks.

 

“So you were just going to keep it secret? Forever? You’re my best friend, Foggy, and you were just never going to tell me that you run around at night. Beating up mobsters. Who have guns.”

“As if you’ve never kept secrets from me!”

Matt takes a deep breath.

“I. I hear heartbeats. My senses are better than everyone else’s, even other blind people.”

“Wait, what?”

“You asked about my secrets. There. That’s it. That’s the only thing I haven’t told you. That’s how I knew that Karen was telling the truth. And I know it’s sort of creepy and invasive but I can’t turn it off and I’ve never been the best person but you’re running around beating people up which is completely against the law and _you were supposed to be better than me_.”

“Matt, I—”

“Were you even ever going to tell me?”  

Foggy looks down.

“No.”

Matt knows he’s telling the truth. Foggy closes his eyes. He hears Matt sniffling.

“Sorry, Matt,” he says quietly.  

 

Days pass. They avoid each other outside of the office. They investigate Fisk. He's tired of fighting with his best friend. Matt might be one to brood with his guilt, but Foggy's always been one for direct solutions. 

"I didn't want to tell you, because I didn't want you to worry and because you're the most important person in my life and I didn't want to make your life harder. I'm sorry." 

"You can't just keeps stuff like this from me, Foggy. We're a team." 

"I know. I'm sorry. It won't happen again." 

Matt pauses. Foggy is telling the truth. Or the truth as he sees it. 

"You tell me when you're going out. Or if you get hurt." 

"Deal." 

 

After everything, after Fisk and the corrupt police and renewing their eternal bro-hood, Foggy sits next to Matt on his couch, beer in hand. Matt is curled up on one end of the sofa, half listening to the TV. Foggy had been narrating it earlier, but now they were sitting quietly together. Foggy tilts his head back to rest it on the back of the couch. He stares at his ceiling lights and says, musingly,

 

“In another world, do you think you’re Daredevil?”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, you could totally run around with your freaky senses, beating criminal-ninja-scum up.”

“And who are you in this universe?”

“Me? I’m a butcher.”

  
Matt laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave a comment or something on your way out if you liked it! That's the only way I know if what Ive written is any good, haha. 
> 
> I'm super uncertain about all the voices in this one, but I'm tired of working on this, so. May come back to revise the end + middle + lots of this. 
> 
> im @ anonymousAlchemist.tumblr.com for more shenanigans if that's what you're into.


End file.
